


Out of the Blue

by Paintdripps



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Based on a Tumblr Post, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Humor, M/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4294890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paintdripps/pseuds/Paintdripps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Who wouldn't be angry? You ate all of my cereal and faked your death for three years!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based off of [these](http://paintdripps.tumblr.com/post/123392226115/ridiculous-sentence-prompts)

 

“Who wouldn’t be angry? You ate _all of my cereal and faked your death for three years!_ ”

Jean rakes a hand through his already-disheveled hair in a vain attempt to push it out of his face.

Eren—what the fuck, seriously, Jean can’t believe his eyes, but here he is—just shrugs and takes another bite of Jean’s Lucky Charms. As though he hasn’t a care in the world.

“You need to simmer down a little,” Eren says through a mouthful of half-chewed cereal. Jean cringes in disgust. Some things haven’t changed, even in the past three years. Eren had never had good table manners before the accident. Well, before the “accident.” Apparently the whole thing had been staged, or something, because Eren’s still here, and not dead and long-buried in the ground, like Jean had previously thought.

“‘Simmer down’?” Jean practically screeches. “Eren, it’s fucking three in the morning. I just went to sleep! You can’t just break into someone’s apartment at three in the morning and—”

“I didn’t break in,” Eren interrupts, waving his spoon around in the air. “You left your window open. Nothing’s broken, y’see.”

“What the actual fuck? I live on the seventh floor, for crying out loud!”

Eren shrugs again, but there’s a hint of pride in the way his eyes crinkle up and a grin tugs at his lips. “...Your point?”

“And you ate my cereal,” Jean reiterates, unsure of whether he should be relieved that Eren hadn’t fallen to his death on his way in, or irritated about his nonchalance about it all.

“I was hungry.”

“Point is,” Jean says, “this is not a thing that normal people do.” Another thought strikes him. “And how do you even know where I live? I mean, you fucked off to Lord-knows-where for the past few years, and no one even heard from you, and—and did Mikasa even know about this? Or Armin? Eren, you—”

Eren raises a hand in a ‘stop’ gesture. “Whoa, there. One question at a time.”

Jean is reminded, vaguely, of a time when Eren was always the one going ballistic, and Jean had to be the one doing the placating. Eren has definitely changed; there’s a sort of easy manner to him, now, one that wasn’t there before. That’s not to say that his fire is gone, but it’s been tamed a little. Or maybe that’s just a thing that comes with getting older. The last time that Jean had seen him, he’d been seventeen and angry at the whole damn world.

But twenty is a good look on Eren. Much better than his teenage rage. Jean takes in the hint of stubble on his jaw, the longer, wavier hair. Eren’s frame has filled out, too—he’s stockier than Jean now, with broader shoulders, and wherever Eren has been must have had a lot of sun, because he’s notably darker than before.

“...I’ve been a lot of places,” Eren says cryptically. Jean wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he gets the answers that he wants, but he has a feeling that this new Eren won’t give in to that. “It’s a long story. You don’t want to hear it.” He frowns, scrutinizing Jean’s face, and Jean suddenly feels a prickle of self-consciousness. “You don’t look too good, man. Have you been sleeping well?”

“I told you,” Jean sighs. “I just went to bed at two.”

Eren hums. “That’s not good. You oughtta be getting at least seven hours. What time do you have to get up in the morning?”

“Uh...” He glances at the clock hanging on the wall, ticking away. It’s 3:21, now. He thinks he has class at nine, although the fog of sleep deprivation in his head isn’t helping things. He really ought to stop taking the late shift at work. “Doesn’t matter.”

“No,” Eren chides. “It does. Sleep is important.”

“Well how the fuck am I supposed to sleep?” Jean gestures wildly. “I mean, you’re here now, and—you’re not dead!”

Eren, apparently having finished the last of his sugary midnight snack (does this count as a midnight snack? It’s way past midnight), tips the bowl back and gulps down the milk. “No, I’m not,” he agrees.

“Care to explain anything?” Jean asks, exasperated. “Like why you’re in my apartment, for instance?”

Eren hums. “You have a pretty nice apartment. And it’s not in the slummy part of town. How are you even affording this?”

“Marco and I split rent,” Jean answers, “but that didn’t answer my question—”

Eren’s eyes light up. “Marco? He’s still around? Where is he?”

“He’s on an internship in Philly till the end of the quarter, and would you just fucking answer me?!”

That sobers Eren up, finally. God.  

“Oh,” he says. “Well...” He brings his leg up and puts his foot on the table, much to Jean’s disgust—Eren’s sneakers don’t look like he’s wiped them in months, they’re so caked in mud and is that blood? That better not be blood he’s getting on my table—and starts to roll up his pant leg.

Jean stares. There’s a gash across his calf, as though—

“Grazed by a bullet,” Eren says by way of explanation. “Rite-Aid asks a lot of questions, usually, and since I figured you were in the city—”

“What the fuck,” Jean blurts out.

“I kind of need to get it disinfected, and walking’s a bitch,” Eren continues. “You got any rubbing alcohol?”

“...Eren?”

“Yeah, Jean?”

Before Jean can think better of it, he envelopes his old friend in a tight hug. Eren squeaks in surprise.

“I don’t know where you’ve been, or what you’ve been doing,” he whispers fervently, “but I’m glad you’re not dead.”

“Me too, Jean.” A pause. “You, uh, you’re kind of crushing me, and—”

“Right. Rubbing alcohol. Got it.” There’s probably some in the bathroom cabinet. Jean turns to go.

“Oh, and, um, I’m really sorry, but if you have any clean gauze, that’d be nice too.” Eren holds up his right hand, and Jean notices for the first time the somewhat dirty wrapping on where his fourth finger and pinky should be... Wait.

“Oh my god, Eren, what happened to your hand?” Jean feels sick.

“Oh, that. Long story. Well, actually, not that long a story. But you don’t really wanna hear it.” Eren shrugs.

Jean bites back the shout he’s dying to make, that yes, he does in fact want to hear the story, but he decides that it can wait.

Rubbing alcohol and gauze, then. Jean shoos his exhaustion away.

He’s got a job to do.

 


	2. Chapter 2

When Jean gets back from the bathroom, a nearly-full bottle of rubbing alcohol in one hand and a box full of gauze pads in the other, Eren’s jeans are on the floor and he’s picking at the bandage on his hands.

Jean pretends not to notice his lack of pants in favor of setting down the medical supplies on the table. “You’re sure you don’t want me to take you to a hospital, or something?”

“No health insurance,” Eren says, wrinkling his nose. He waves a hand dismissively. “Besides, I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

“Um, no,” Jean says, looking at the gash on his calf. “That’ll take at least a few days to scab over, and then—fuck, I wish Marco was here.”

Eren hums. “Marco always was good at cleaning up scrapes.”

“Not just that. Marco’s a pre-med student. He’d know what to do. Fuck, dude, I’m pretty sure that needs stitches. And your hand—”

Eren shrugs. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You’re missing two entire fingers, how am I not supposed to worry?”

Eren flashes him a toothy smile, and Jean is reminded of Eren at fourteen, when he’d been obsessed with parkour and was constantly doing crazy stunts.

Jean wonders if Eren still knows how to do that no-hand backflip of his. Jean had stopped practicing the gymnastics tricks sometime around the time Eren had died. He doubts he could even do a front handspring now.

It’s trippy, having someone you thought had been dead for years sitting right in front of you.

“I just need it disinfected,” Eren says. “Other than that, it’ll heal up nice and quick on its own.”

Jean quirks an eyebrow. “What, are you Wolverine, now?”

Eren’s grin only stretches wider. “Me? No. I’m missing the adamantium skeleton and claws. But close.”

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Jean wrinkles his nose at the sharp smell of rubbing alcohol as he uncaps the bottle. “This is gonna sting like a bitch.”

“Jean, do I look like I care?”  

He looks at Eren, and no, Eren does not look like he cares, not in the slightest. In fact, more than anything else, Eren looks like he wants to go to sleep—his eyelids are drooping a little.

Well, that makes two of us, Jean thinks, and he sets to work.

As he tips the rubbing alcohol onto a gauze pad, a silence descends on them. Jean can hear a siren wailing somewhere off in the distance; apparently Eren hears it, too, because his posture shifts and becomes more on edge.

That’s a little more like the old Eren.   

Jean hesitates, wondering how he’s supposed to reach Eren’s calf at this angle, but then Eren notices the situation.

“I’ll lie down,” he says, and gets off the barstool to flop facedown on the carpet.

Jean isn’t sure how long it’s been since he last vacuumed, but he decides to ignore that in favor of getting the task at hand done.

“Nice undies, man,” he says, kneeling down beside him. His mouth feels a little dry. Eren’s boxer briefs do a very nice job of hugging the curve of his ass. Not that Jean is checking out his butt. Nope. It’s just that there are hibiscus flowers and pineapples in obnoxiously bright colors printed on his underwear. The neon hues just kind of draw the eye there, you know?

“Don’t judge.”

Jean presses the freshly-soaked gauze pad into the gash on his calf. Eren doesn’t so much as flinch. Impressive.

“D’you need me to disinfect your hand, too?”

“Nah. That one’s pretty much closed.”

Jean gnaws on his lip. “...And you don’t want to tell me about that one?”   
“In a week it won’t even matter.”

Jean is far too tired for this cryptic bullshit. He stands up. “I’ll be right back. Need to get you a band-aid for that.”

“Sure.”

Jean stumbles his way back into the bathroom and searches for the band-aids.

* * *

“You can crash in my room,” Jean says, when Eren’s leg has been covered up with a gauze pad and tape. (He hadn’t been able to find a band-aid large enough to cover the wound, so they figured that taping some gauze on was a good enough substitute. Jean had also given Eren some gauze to replace the dingy thing on his hand; Eren hadn’t let him help with that, though, saying that Jean probably wouldn’t be able to stomach it. Which was true, and Jean couldn’t help but feel relieved at that.)

“Then where will you sleep?”

“I dunno. I’ll take Marco’s room, I guess.”

Eren frowns. “That’s stupid. I’ll take the couch. You should just stay in your room.”   
“No, you’re my guest—”

Eren cuts him off. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t want to intrude too much.”

Jean has to laugh at that. “You literally broke into my apartment—which, by the way, I still don’t understand how you got in here, given that I’m on the seventh floor and you have like half a hand—”

The offended expression on Eren’s face shouldn’t make Jean laugh harder, but it does. Probably because it’s almost four in the morning and everything is funny at four in the morning. “I have, like, one and a half hands, thank you very much, not just half a hand. Also, it’s not even that hard. I went up the fire escape and made a leap of faith.”

The horror stops Jean short. “You could have fallen to your death!”

Eren shrugs, looking mildly irritated. “Point is, I didn’t, and—” He stops. “...what was my main point?”

“Your main point was that you’re going to sleep in my room,” Jean tells him, grabbing him by the shoulders and starting to steer him towards his room. He has a feeling that Eren is probably more than strong enough to resist him, but for whatever reason, Eren lets himself be pushed around. “And I’m going to chill out in Marco’s room or something. Because you are my guest, and you’re apparently some kind of suicidal bastard who jumps into people’s windows, and you need rest.”

They make it into Jean’s room, and Jean pushes Eren onto his rumpled bed.

Eren is laughing, and a lump forms in Jean’s throat. This picture is familiar—from that one crazy, hazy afternoon about three and a half years ago, when Jean’s parents weren’t home and they’d been bored and dumb.

Eren suddenly freezes. He gazes up at Jean. “You okay, man?”

“Yeah.” He shakes his head. “I’m a little spaced out, in all honesty. I need sleep.”

“M’kay. Good night, Jean.”

He starts for the door. “G’night, Eren.”

“Oh, and Jean?” Eren’s voice sounds kind of small, now. And vulnerable. He sounds vulnerable.

He pauses. “...yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

* * *

Jean makes his way into Marco’s little bedroom. It’s still pristine, exactly the way that his flatmate had left it at the beginning of the quarter.

Jean makes himself a mental note to fix the bed in the morning. Marco likes to keep things neat. Jean owes him that much, even when he’s in another city a whole state away.

He can’t sleep, though, not with the digital clock with its glowing green numbers—4:34, it says—in the corner and a thousand thoughts running through his mind.

Eren is alive.

Eren is alive and mostly in one piece and sleeping in his room.

What the hell, how is he supposed to sleep?

* * *

True to Eren’s word, when he gets up in the morning and peels off the gauze to show Jean, the gash in his leg has pretty much healed.

Jean isn’t sure how or why, but he shrugs it off and decides that he is way too tired to care. (He hadn’t been able to fall asleep until about six.) It’s good enough for him that Eren is not bleeding out in his apartment or anything.

“Did you get enough sleep?” Eren asks him with a yawn.

Well, he’d had a grand total of two hours. Jean shrugs and pours water into the coffee maker—he’s never been one to sleep much, period. Not since senior year of high school, in any case. But it’s nothing that caffeine won’t fix.

“Sorry,” Eren says sheepishly, crumpling his leg bandage up in a ball. He pitches it towards Jean’s wastebasket in his left hand... and misses.

Well, that hasn’t changed in the past three years, at least. Eren is still a lousy shot.

Jean squints at him. “You gonna pick that up, or...?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Eren flashes him a grin, and Jean finds himself smiling back.

He’s missed this, this easy rhythm of their friendship.

“So what’s for breakfast?” Eren asks, having properly disposed of his used dressing.

“Piping hot cup of tar,” Jean replies, glancing at the brewing pot of coffee. He’s never really been a coffee lover—he prefers tea, coffee is more of Marco’s thing—but when it comes to keeping him awake and (basically) functional, black coffee is the best thing for the job.

Eren wrinkles his nose. “You ought to lay off the caffeine for a week or something, dude. Let yourself detox.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Seriously. You freakin’ smell like a Starbucks. I think the coffee’s oozing out of your pores.”

“Thanks, Mom,” he says, rolling his eyes. He grabs a slice of whole wheat bread from the loaf in its plastic bag. Then, after a moment’s reconsideration, he grabs a second slice, and pops them both into the toaster.

“Toast,” Eren observes. “Truly a gourmet breakfast you’ve got going there.”

Jean flips him the bird. “Hey, I’m in a hurry, and someone ate the last of my Lucky Charms...”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Help yourself to an apple or whatever,” Jean says, gesturing vaguely at the small mountain of fruit piled on the kitchen counter. Eren grabs one, and without bothering to wash it, just bites into it with a wet crunch.

Jean cringes. “Jesus, Eren, you’re supposed to at least rinse the thing first. Don’t you know they put wax on apples in the store to make ‘em shiny?” Well, that’s according to Christa, at least, but Jean is inclined to believe that it’s true. Grocery store apples always have a bitter taste to them before you wash them.

Eren shrugs. “It’s whatever. Wax isn’t gonna kill me.”

“But what if it’s dirty? What if some middle-aged housewife with her ridiculously long nails touched it and had rubella or some shit growing under her nails?”

Eren raises an eyebrow at him. “...That’s an oddly specific hypothetical example.”

“Shut up.” Jean grabs the finished coffee pot and pours himself a mug. He knocks back a burning hot swig. “So, got any plans for today?”

“Nah.” Eren grins. “I was just thinking of laying low for today.”

“‘Laying low’? ...Eren, you had better not be a federal fugitive, I swear to God...”

“Who, me? Never.” He chuckles. The toast pops up; Jean goes to the fridge and pulls out a half-empty jar of peach preserves.

“I’d ask if you prefer butter on your toast, but I’m out,” Jean says, setting the jar down on the table with a clink. “I really need to go on a grocery run sometime.” He grabs two plates from the cabinet and a knife from the silverware drawer.  

“And you?”

“Huh?”

“Do you have any plans for today?” Eren takes the knife from him and unscrews the jar of peach preserves.

“Well, uh, I have class at eight thirty, it turns out, so—” Jean’s eyes widen as he checks the time. “Fucking hell, it’s almost gone eight!”

“You’d better hurry, then.” Eren’s eyes glitter with amusement.

Jean glances down at himself—his pajamas are sweatpants and a t-shirt, that’s pretty much normal clothes, right? Ah, it’s not like he’s looking to impress anyone—and knocks back another mouthful of coffee.

Jean grabs his plain piece of toast and stuffs it in his mouth. “I’m gonna be late, I need to take the subway and—” The words come out muffled. Eren just laughs.

“Don’t choke,” he says as Jean grabs his backpack from where it’s hanging by the door.

“Don’t burn the apartment down,” Jean mumbles around his toast.

“Yeah, yeah.” Eren waves a hand. “Go on ahead, I can take care of myself.”

Jean hurries out the door.

It’s only when he’s standing in the elevator that he realizes: he’s forgotten his keys.

Shit. Better hope Eren’s there when he gets back.

        

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://www.paintdripps.tumblr.com)  
> I wanted to keep this fic short and funny--after all, it was spawned by a ridiculous sentence prompt--but I did some planning and there's going to be a lot of feelings and shit bursting in later.  
> ...I think I'm going to try and start the rest of the chapters using those ridiculous sentences, though. That should be interesting.
> 
> Let me know what you thought of this chapter, or of the story as a whole so far! :) I love to hear from people.   
> Hope you have a great day, and thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a one-shot. Just for fun.  
> But now I really want to continue and expand this au. So I guess this is gonna be a thing from now on (yay!).  
> Comments are greatly appreciated--what are your theories about Eren? Did you like this? Dislike this? I wanna know. 
> 
> (I have a [tumblr,](http://www.paintdripps.tumblr.com) so feel free to come talk to me at any time!)


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